Design Trends We Don't Like | EDHRECast 309 

The biggest problem with the unrelenting use of Ward is that it’s now pretty much objectively correct to just swap out all of your removal for board wipes. Like if I’m paying four mana for a swords or six mana for a beast within, I might as well be casting a Wrath of God or whatever.

It may sound counterintuitive, but one of the design trends that imo is having a negative impact on the design and play space is avoiding drawbacks and avoiding "feel-bads". The game is more interesting when you learn to play around things and think how to avoid the feel-bad situations instead of being spoon-fed ways to protect yourself from your mistakes.

One of the natural checks for these high end overpowered commanders was the threat of them being immediately removed, this forced players to plan ahead and slot in those instant protection spells and equipment. This had the added effect of taking away card slots from the overall strategy. These new paint by numbers commanders have a baked in wincon on a huge body with built in protection. Big manna commanders absolutely should have big effects, but the player used to have to plan around the target that the commander would be, this is no longer the case.

It feels like Ward is something that Wizards really ramped up lately due to Casual Commander, so people wouldn't feel as bad about getting their cool powerful Commander/card removed. Problem is that they rarely account for that extra protection in a card's casting/design cost, whereas before with Hexproof, Shroud and even Indestructible, they were much more selective and deliberate designing around strong built in protection abilites hahaha

One thing I hate about Disguise compared to Morph is that it requires giving up information as specifying something having Ward 2 tells your opponents that the disguised creature is one of a very specific selection from MKM rather than any possible Morph card in your colors. Also I’m positive that Tergrid would have been given Ward if she came out today.

I wish Triomes were just a continuation of the Murmuring Bosk design, maybe not creature subtype focused, but having a single land subtype and having a drawback on the other colors.

I'm glad we touched base on wordy cards -- I love casual commander but I always sigh internally when a fresh game starts and everybody has 3-5 creatures out on the board. That's 12-20 paragraphs of text you have to keep track of simultaneously. People in my pod actually enjoy early board wipes or complete knock-outs solely because they cut down on cognitive load.

Number of legendaries with shroud four(all are green), hex proof forty-two(seventeen are in green), ward currently fifty-nine(twenty-one are in green).

You guys had me giggling at the “Dana, this meme is 16 years old.” on my run today! Love the humor all!

Best Ward story I have is that Minthara can have Ward 0, the mind game of asking your opponent in a serious voice, do you pay 0

I love the farewell hate. All the Timmy’s wanted stronger cards and man did they got it. They even got ward stamped on in. Then. Control players asked. Give us 1 thing to deal with it. They got it and all the Timmy’s cry when it’s being cast. How often I cast a fieldwhipe and it’s just back the next turn. Or I help the non creature deck by it. A hard reset is sometimes the fairest. Love it in my planeswalker deck

I like Ward as a concept. It is better than Shroud and Hexproof for the most part. It's just being overused at the moment.

First time I noticed that keyword-ception thing, was in the Murders at Markov set, with the suspect mechanic, which gives menace... which means can't be blocked except by 2 or more...and also this creature can't block at all.

This printing of Voja is leagues beyond Voja's elf companion, a rare from the set. There's literally no comparison between their power levels -- for the exact same mana value. Speaking of design trends: Why does the Elf part of the text not say "Target creature gets +X/+X", or "Your creatures get +X/+X until end of turn", or "One target creature gets X +1/+1 counters"? Given how easy it is to just vomit out Elves into play to trigger it? Also, worth asking, why is there NO MANA COST attached to that strong of an ability, such as X = Elf count and Y = Wolf count?

You also forget that if you use roaming throne and name the creature type of the creature with ward it doubles the ward trigger. This is why I say they need a generic Shadowspear type answer for ward.

37:00 Oh, I feel this. I've got a Thirteenth Doctor/Yasmin Khan deck, and keeping track of all the different things in exile (as well as things that aren't in exile, but that I can still cast/play) is headache-inducing. Not to mention all the abilities that trigger off me casting/playing stuff from outside my hand, or from exile, or...it can get a bit complicated.

The discussion of Ward vs Hexproof brought to mind the idea of Chalice checking. Not quite the same thing, but I wouldn't be surprised if it starts becoming more common to just cast into things to see if people remember their triggers.

The logic "Its too powerfull so everyone will want to remove it, so lets add ward to it" it's like trying to put out a fire by throwing gasoline at it, is shomething i really dont understand from Wizards

Hey that's me! Another deep cut include is the "lace" effects such as Purelace, Thoughtlace, Chaoslace etc in commanders who have protection from monocoloured such as niv-mizzet supreme or General Ferrous Rokiric. Especially in Rokiric, one mana veil effect in boros is really underrated, and currently these cards are in zero decks for him.

Your arguments “they only put Ward on good things but not ok things and that doesn’t make sense” really doesn’t make sense to me, because if something is only “ok” the idea that it’s harder to target wouldn’t magically make it better a lot better. Ward on things that are powerful so they’ll stick around makes sense, but the issue imo is the Ward costs too expensive. If all Wards were reduced by {1} and Ward 1 became Ward Pay 2 life, there would be far less complaints.

My only issue with ward, as you both mentioned, is the creature with ward being able to be targeted with a spell or ability, then ward triggering to try and counter the spell unless the ward cost is payed. With my playgroup ward basically gets treated as "can't target this thing unless you pay the ward cost" rather than the actual way it works. That being said, I still like it and think it allows higher cmc commanders to actually have a fighting chance to stay on board against all the hyper efficient removal that is available. You all recently did a podcast discussing the average cmc of commanders and how the higher cmc commanders are less common for various reasons, the risk of immediately losing it without getting any value out of it being one of those reasons. Then talking about Ovika and other high cmc commanders that you feel more comfortable playing because there's a higher chance you actually get to do something with the commander before it gets removed. As for ward costs, I much prefer mana being the ward cost over alternate ward costs because paying extra mana is pretty universally considered bad for any deck to do. Paying life, discarding a card, sacrificing a creature, etc. aren't often as challenging to pay nor universally a bad cost to pay for a pretty high number of deck archetypes. IMO, too often those alternate ward costs will be good and/or too easy to pay for by opponents if it isn't a flat mana cost. As for Voja's issue, IMO, the ward isn't really a big deal, it's the lack of meaningful restriction on its ability to be triggered and how strong that ability is.

What I worry about is all the “way too easy to do” strategies like “draw a second card per turn” or “when you play a land”… it’s so annoying to play against these decks because they stabilize just by playing magic. It’s not fun or interesting.

Ward could be more interesting by giving its owner a benefit. Like, white could have ward creatures that trigger draw you a card, blue could let you see your opponents hand, etc

Problem: no sane table will let you untap with Voja if they can prevent it. Solution: give it either Haste or Ward. (the other solution is run protection spells, but why would you want players to think about their deck?)

The problem with Altar of Bone in Atla Palani is that, in general, you're only running 7+ mana creatures, and you don't WANT them in your hand. You want them in your library, where Atla can hatch them for free. It works in some versions of the deck, (like, the ones that want to loop changelings) but most of the time it's kind of a nonbo.

I think ward is fine. What isn’t is overpowered commanders like Voja. They just need to balance cards better for their costs.

I'm probably an outlier, but I thought people didn't run enough boardwipes. I usually see people say you should have 1-2 sweepers, but I think games are too uninteractive with such a low count. Not to say I like this type of card design, but if people finally feel compelled to run more interaction, that's nice.

I honestly feel like the population of the Ward mechanic is due to casual commander being a popular format. Many casual players will/want to build commander decks with Pillar-Legends. (Legends like that Jund Manaburn guy, where their whole plan falls the moment the commander is removed.) The more commanders that WoTC prints with needlepoint specific abilities & build arounds, the more they will probably toss Ward onto it. I wish they would go back to printing commanders that did not hold hands and lead you to only 1 or 2 choices. The open ended commanders are some of the more fun ones to brew with.

Here's my idea to fix Ward, especially when it's on commanders: It also applies to the card's controller! So it's even closer to Shroud, and more importantly *it has a downside*. That's what Ward is missing, it's generally powerful, but it's just free value, and it's on everything. I think if it also applied to the controller, that would add juuuust enough of a decision for players that it wouldn't feel so bad to play against.

I very much feel the “word soup cards” argument, when I play with my friends I am essentially the judge. I keep track of EVERYTHING on the table and remind everyone if they miss a trigger etc, we’re playing casually so it makes sense to help each other. But with how complicated and how much text there is on these cards, it becomes very overwhelming trying to track everything not just for yourself so you know what’s going on, but for everyone else so that they play correctly

As a fairly new player when LCI came out, my god the keywords were not helpful - from the descend/decended similarities, to having to check what 'explore' does as opposed to 'discover' every single time either came up.

my biggest issue with Voja is: why does a 5mana 5/5 with so many keywords #1 potentially replaces itself OR draws more than one card when it enters #2 have a damn win-con stapled onto it's effect #3 and have integrated protection?!? if say. it would be 7mana CMDR... m a y b e the backlash wouldn't have been so hard... Why does that card have to do all of that on it's own?

Ward is an excellent design decision in that it makes your idk, 6 cmc and up creature not get immediately killed by a 2 mana spell (they have to trade with your 6 cmc for a 4, or 5 mana interaction). The problem is just ballancing what gets ward (they ARE doing it too much) and which kinds of cards need it... I'd say the "just wait for me to untap with this" kinds of creatures are the ones that deserve ward, while creatures with immediate payoffs should rarely get Ward

Honestly banning a boardwipe, even a pushed one like farewell sounds like insane people talk to me

I think ward is fine. I’ve rarely had a powerful creature with ward on it where the ward actually protected it. “If I tap out to remove their ward creature, would you not attack me, etc?” The table will often be sympathetic to them since they had to overpay for their pinpoint removal. And even without a political deal, someone can usually just pay the ward cost. And even if someone accidentally targets it, you’d be a real party pooper in a casual game to say their spell gets countered instead of letting them take it back. In my experience playing, ward is practically flavor text unless it’s Sauron or Saruman, and even those can be paid pretty regularly by most decks if necessary.

I ran 3 to 4 nukes minimum whenever possible with a dozen or so interactions; Wizards new favorite four letter word just made me doulble the nukes up. That, or I break out Zurgo (boardwipe tribal) and teach the table the meaning of nuclear proliferation *shrugs*.

I feel like the hate for ward is a little too much. You cannot disagree with me unless you pay (3). Now nobody can disagree with me because for some reason the ward cost will be too high.

A Toad the Wet Sprocket reference? Well done. Well done. 👍🏻

Altar of bone is not the greatest in a bunch of atla palani decks if they are more on the casual side where all their creatures are fatties so you don’t want them in your hand anyways

To combat ward woc will creep in more removal spells that say "this spell cannot be countered" like they did for MKM limited. If you're esper colors, grab a copy of void rend.

Is it time to bust out my play set of "Beseiju, Who Shelters All" to counter warded threats?

I'm surprised when talking about keyword inception (stealing someone else's term) that you didn't mention investigate. Oh, what does investigate do? It makes a clue token. ... Now what the heck is a clue token?? It's like the inverse of the map token.

The ward problem, especially with cards like Voja, definitely suffers from having more and more commander-focused designs in non-commander products.

I'm not a fan of most legendaries feeling like they are on rails or handholding new players. An example is Saint Traft and Rem Karolus. I think the first part of text in this card is incredibly interesting and would make for a fascinating commander but then they threw in the second line that leads people to turning it into a convoke commander.

My playgroup did a though experiment. 5 year old or older commanders and give them "Ward X where X is half this spells mana value rounded down" to see how strong commanders from the past would be if made today. It convinced me that ward is a problem, and should be used sparingly. Biggest issue was Omnath Locus of Rage.

The reason we weren't complaining about Hexproof so much is that they weren't putting the keyword on win conditions. They were usually really careful with Hexproof and for good reason. However, for ward, they're just randomly slapping it on cards now and on creatures that can win games all on their own, which is why everyone's complaining.

It's ironic that both spree and kicker solve the problem with Farewell, but many of the cards with spree are not costed well enough. I know the design team said that they recently started playing with the cards in a limited sense but i would prefer them to play at least with the current set of standard cards. It would keep power levels closer.

My favorite trend is seeing R&D try to force Commander decks to play fair only for those pieces to be abused by the decks they were meant to keep in check. Dockside, Notion Thief, Opposition Agent, Dauthi Voidwalker, Hullbreacher, Narset (PoV), Fierce Guardianship, Deflecting Swat, Orcish Bowmasters, Ward.

boy do i not like a lot of the design trends in magic lol, excited for this episode!

as someone who enjoys yugioh, whenever i hear any content creator complain about how much card text there is, i just sigh to myself. it's really not that bad, honestly

as someone brewing a lurrus oops all small aristocrats deck, The removal package is mostly either cute/stapes: sac the biggest, swords, switch peoples most expensive thing, sac the biggest. Or straight up whipes that only hit big things, battle of bywater, slaughter the strong and the 3-5 other friends with similar whipe effects, as they hit most problematic things, and should deal minimal damage to my board. Running classic removal just is not worth it, even if I get to recycle it with lurrus because it is an artifact that sacs itself

in the MtG Goldfish podcast, I think it was Crim who suggested that edict effects (force opponent to sacrifice) have become stronger relative to targeted removal.They still obviously have the issue that sometimes you don't get to kill the actual thing you wanted to get rid of but ward being much more prevalent know brings them closer in value to targeted removal. Obviously ignore board wipes here but they have their own issues (mana intensive, often global. often very expensive if onesided and also very rare etc.)

Maybe its time to put Wash Away in all my control decks for all the commanders with ward.

The Ward on Sauron is a flavour thing. In the books, the first time the allies defeated Sauron, it took Elendil's (would have been a legendary creature) sacrifice to allow Isildur to cut the ring off and banish Sauron back to the command zone. The second time when he was defeated for good, Frodo had to sacrifice the One Ring (a legendary artifact) in order to accomplish this. Just giving Sauron Hexproof wouldn't have told this story.

putting on my ol' game designer hat in the shower, I wonder if there's design space for a 3-4CMC removal spell that ignores Ward...? It feels like Ward was made to combat specifically 1-2 CMC removal by making it feel like 2-5 CMC. The problem I feel is it making more budget or synergistic removal at the 3-5 CMC spot unplayable. Almost as if this was specifically targeted (heh) at budget players.

At a table that regularly sees Miirym and Ovika, especially with Roaming Throne, free counterspells, etc., I've had to adopt removal by dictate (Dictate of Erebos, Plaguecrafter, Soul Shatter, ...) under Malik, Grim Manipulator, and it's still not enough. I can't ask folks to abandon their favorite decks, but it's repeatedly caused me to consider quitting.

Ward is an amazing keyword/ability. The issue is what they assign as the ward cost on some creatures. Sauron, the Dark Lord’s ward cost is insane. It’s already a good card and while it is understandable to put ward on so it so it doesn’t catch hands immediately, but that ward cost is too much.

Something easily dying to removal absolutely trumps whatever good effect it might have (if it's not a massive ETB). This is a well known dynamic at this point. That's why powerful cards actually need some built in protection or they are unplayable. Ward is a pretty ingenious way of doing it.

I love the concept of the sheilob effect so much that id love it if they printed those halves individually at half the cost of the op commander. I think they realize it too. Look at ulalek and its same copy effect in a card that can go into every other color combination because its a colorless artifact rather than a 5 color combo commander.

If Jodah, Archmage Eternal had been printed today, it would have Ward 2. Imagine.

As a disciple of Richard (mtg goldfish) I play little spot removal anyway and use wraths and deterrence instead. It is still silly to make every strong timmy creature ward 2+. It feels like adding "can't be countered" to every relevant spell.

When I saw the commit a crime keyword that focuses on targeting some of the ward generosity cards makes sense when you look at the 3 to 5 magic set pod that obviously the designers build to communicate to one another.

Sauron’s ward being sac a legendary permanent is flavor for the destruction of the one ring to destroy Sauron. Also, in the set, the ring bearer mechanic can turn any chump into a legendary permanent

Does Lore and flavor actually prevent cards from being more consistent? Part of the reason we have Cloak and Manifest is because "manifest" does not meet the theme of Karlov Manor. The places where we see keywords used more appropriately, such as LoTR's Scene Boxes are the ones less bounded by flavored-mechanics.

I agree with some of the other comments about ward on higher cmc card, it makes them a bit safer to play. It feels really bad to spend 7 mana to play a Gisela only for it to be immediately removed for 1 for swords or even 2 for a counter. Ill take it a step futher and say that should be a restriction - anything under 5-6 cmc shouldnt have ward, just because of what you all said about curve. On turn 2-4, players more likely wont have the mana available, whereas 5+ most have their ramp ramping so it makes it more of a choice - keep the 2 or 3 extra for my own stuff, or use the it to respond to the scary thing with ward. Ward is almost a response to ramp in game, or at least can be used that way. Ward also doesnt exist in a vacuum and it's increase runs parallel to the increase in ramp, especially treasure generators. Design wise, It almost seems to be a RESPONSE to the increase in treasures

Altar of Bone is actually great for more than just the obvious free sacrifice and tutor. I run a few smaller creatures like Elvish Herder that I'd rather not polymorph into, so it lets you get those so you're less likely to hit those with the egg deaths.

I think a good short term solution for ward is removal that dont let the target creature trigger in response (like a weird version of split second, but just for triggers and for the targeted object)?

Yes and no. If your deck does not rely on a creature board state then yes by all means wipe away. However, there are two points to this problem. First, if you do have a board, you would not trade your advantage for one player’s creature in most cases. Second, for this reason the only decks that are going to run more board wipes are decks that don’t rely on creatures and already rely on board wipes over target creature removal anyway. Also, the only thing they have to fix is change the rules on ward so that the ward cost is an in addition to cast this spell targeting… Which is a concept already established in the game. Also, checking the ward cost on already overpowered creatures.

I think what might be reasonable is to make ward effect the mana cost of the card its on. I'm not against design taking us to a place where we have to find different answers for things, because I think interaction is a category that can become pretty stale without it, but I think the balance of being able to gain a mana advantage by interacting with one powerful and more expensive thing should still be there. That way ward just buys you time until your opponents have enough mana to remove it and still progress their game plan at the same time, but they can still create the ward situation we have now by not progressing their game plan to get rid of the warded creature and I think that's fair. I think what is the most egregious about Voja is that it gives you a mana advantage with ward on top of card advantage and time advantage with its last ability to pay off for having elves and wolves. Yes, having two different creature types to get the payoff makes it less powerful, but giving you an advantaged on three fronts is not good design. On the other hand I think something like Sauron, the Dark Lord is better design, if you are looking at it from the standpoint of being a finisher for a control deck. Those types of creatures should be hard to remove, but everyone has at least one legendary creature, so you have an interesting choice to make if you want to interact. The ward and amass abilities gain advantage on the same front (card advantage), the last two abilities require you to have several combat steps or to spend cards yourself to speed up your clock, so I think this is a great design for a control deck to finish the game. There is an inevitability to it that still has a lot of push and pull with your opponents.

I think part of the text problem is due to wanting things to work in a specific way. It's not just "Whenever you attack, put a +1/+1 counter on each attacking creature you control." it's "Whenever you attack with one or more modified creatures, put a +1/+1 counter on each attacking modified creature you control." Which on its face isn't that bad in practice, it's a hoop that rewards you for jumping through it by making sure your modified creatures stay modified, but also it doubled the amount of characters used in order to accomplish that, despite the ability not being that complicated.

This while episode really highlights my problems with modern magic, and its why I decided to build a low power cube. Its a 2 player cube meant for newer players (so I can teach more of my friends), and no cards have more then 2 lines of text! (the best rate on a creature is colossal dreadmaw)

If you give ward to a "just ok creature" to make it better, it actually doesn't do much because it won't be targeted that often

One thing in wards favor is that it slows games down. Commander players have been concerned that games end too quickly and high cmc cards are getting less playable. I think ward ia useful here and extending the game a bit actually keeps more things useable.

With all the Ward around, playing Chimil the Inner Sun feels great.

More interaction cards that can't be countered helps the ward issue..... Destroy x creature, spell can't be countered..... Done, no board wipe

I agree with most of what's being dicussed. The only thing I don't have any problem with is commons and uncommons having more and better choices. The more flexibility we have in the commons the mord accessible the game is. No one wants to run a bad common when there is a good rare. But if the commons does more of what rare cards used to do, then the game is more accessible from a financial standpoint. Just want to highlight that when talking about complexity creep. Not all complexity is bad when it's prolifirated through card design.

I'm actually one of the few people who are in support of ward. If I take up my entire midgame turn to deploy a single threat, I don't want it removed for 1cmc. Ward makes non-etb creatures playable.

So ward is great then? Miirym and Voja demand removal which is exactly why they have ward. That is a good design move since both are a solid mana investment to cast. Ward as a "gotcha" moment will make people learn to check the board before targeting and thus learn more. It is so easy to ask what a card says or ask to read a card before targeting. Maybe this helps balance overuse of swords and path?

I just tried katana sleeves today. They are nuts. The shuffle feel is so good. It feels like I'm mushing butter into butter. Can't believe I haven't heard anyone talk about that

I actually like ward. There is so much cheap and efficient removal in commander now - it’s hard to get engines going and I appreciate this allows pieces to stay on the board.

My issue with ward is that must-kill cards are costing equal to/more to remove than to play. That's a big design issue. It's a similar issue to what modern has, where interaction is worse than the cards it has to be used on.

Can we talk about the recent mechanics that all require some kind of external minigame? Im talking about attractions, the ring tempts you, dungeons, i took a break from magix during the pandemic, and when i came back, all these super dense mechanics came up and it infuriates me

I feel like nobody was really complaining about Ward until Voja. I think the problem is just that Voja is too good, and it having Ward is egregious. I have an Ovika, Enigma Goliath deck and it’s the one I’ve probably played the most. It’s basically izzet mana rocks and x spells, so nothing too blatantly powerful, but I’ve never heard anyone complain about the Ward. Even with all the mana rocks I’m typically the last one to cast my commander because of how expensive they are, and if it could be removed for 1 mana the moment it hits the field I wouldn’t even build the deck. That or it would just have to include a TON of counterspells to protect it, and I’d have to have enough mana to cast Ovika and have enough for the counterspell which would make the deck even slower than it already is.

Power creep isn't a bug, it's a feature. That's how they get you to buy new products. By making your old stuff obsolete.

The reason we are seeing ward so much even on already strong cards is because in the past they had to be carefull with stuff like shroud, hecproof, indestructible. With what they placed it on but with ward just being a extra tax on a card its easyer to stick it on basicly anything since its not hard protection like the other ones since it has a built in way to get around it. Which has led to them being a ittle to liberal with its use in card design instead of keeping the same mentality they had before.

I LOVE my opponents that I have said when I cast Tivit or Voja "6/6 flier with Ward 3" And then they swords it and I go "Ward 3 trigger" Reading the card explains the card. Yeah, Voja is incredibly powerful, but what he does is rather unique still. So, you can play just naya elf ball because he is craterhoof behemoth literally on a 5 mana creature. However, my voja deck is designed to be a midrange monster with a few value wolves, and non-tribe members to play a more interactive style of game. It's still an incredibly powerful deck, but the commander's deisgn allows for more than say, marwyn does. He can be a go wide, tall, or medium strategy, a different mix of tribes. I have a distaste for decks that build themselves. Thankfully, Voja doesn't do that. There are enough elves that you don't have to go down a specific route with them. Sure you ramp into a T3 Voja, but beyond that the things you do can vary wildly. With Sauron though, the ward is decently achievable and has flavor to it. The card is not that good. It's a difficult to interact with Taurean mauler. That's really not great. for 6 mana and dies to boardwipes, I think ward sac a creature is just fine.

I don't like that Voja has a Ward of 3, I think 1 or 2 would have been enough. But I think the card does need it because it seems like the deck doesnt do much without him. It's just Elfball without any juice (I played against it twice and yes, Voja is a pain). I felt the same way about Ghyrson Starn who I played for a while. He has Ward 2 and without him, the deck was just trash. Miirym on the other hand... yeah no.

Value engines like Pantlaza and The First Sliver, and all these wards and hexproofs is why I am reassessing mass removal in all my decks. Do I play Beast Within, or do I play Sunfall? Sunfall, every time.

Honestly, with my playgroup, ward isn't the most common, but even so I still try to rotate removal in my decks to fit the needs of 'what if'. Also, player removal gets around ward

0:26 I snorted when you referenced Toad the Wet Sprocket, similar to what Eric Idol did the first time he heard their name on the radio. 😂

I had to double lightning helix myself to kill a vein ripper last night. Ward is coming for more than just your spells and abilities, it wants your life

Making a second post as its not quite as related to the first. Magic has a weird cyclical nature with the balance of removal and protection. Creatures die too much? Give them regen. Too much regen? Make spells that dont allow regen. Too many spells counter regen? Make indestructible. Too much inndestructible? Exile it. I feel we are hitting a point of exile saturation, especially in formats like commander, where I almost dont want to play a destruction spell. More so again because of all the recursion available. Maro has said they dont want people pulling from exile (waves at Karn). I think thats the right choice. But then it leaves the question how to protect against exile? We are seing flicker and phase effects as one option. And the other is to use ward to make it more costly to remove. (Which as identified was a reaction to people not liking shroud and hexproof)

The ‘can’t be countered’ clause is also something that can be built into a little bit in some decks. Seeming ward ‘counters’ the spell. Niche and not always available but a good way they can re-balance it.

I'm curious what everyone thinks about cards that say "can't be countered" instead of ward. I think that still gives the high cost commander's a chance to "do the thing" once but not in such an oppressive way that it can't be removed. I would rather see that instead of ward, I think.

Giving everything Ward has gone poorly, but mostly because they were stapling it onto already 'finished' Commander options, Voja has the same vibes as Chulane and Korvold, but because it comes with Ward *3* for NO REASON the card goes from 'too good for most pods', like the better Brawl options, to 'why are you playing this outside cEDH/High Power?'. Voja reminds me a bit of Tymna, Tymna is interesting because despite being a Partner Commander, she's actually the best Orzhov Commander ever printed, and is notoriously hard to nerf, unless you just build Voja as your Bears Commander you're going to find it very hard to not push that kind of card well beyond what is fun for most groups. People want to play 7s most of the time, not 8-9s, I wish Wotc would remember that and emphasize 7s more. Since people run very few wipes in cEDH, I also wonder if Voja can sneak into that format (you'd just go Elves/Changelings and through in any key hatebears you need and go Aggro, I think it'll be stronger than Winota was in practice, even in Winota gives you free stuff). I would argue Altar of Bone is actively underplayed in general, but sacrificing a creature isn't a nothing cost in plenty of decks, and Green has access to tutors that fetch instead, so I can see it getting cut a lot, but it's a great fit in Atla. A lot of people have been complaining over the years about Commanders that synergize with themselves (IE 'do the thing' and 'payoff' on the same damn 'you always have this' card), all the while the design team was still worrying about stuff like Thrasios and Edgar Markov (...Edgar Markov is a VERY BAD deck if you run some wipes, just saying) apparently. I'm not sure how you can think Edgar Markov was 'problematic' and look at Voja and say 'this if fine!' while the building your in burns down, free 1/1s aren't QUITE as good as free cards and a repeatable FREE anthem that scales better. Ironicall both decks more or less fold to 'lots of wraths', but people who are losing to wraths really hate losing to wraths (mostly because it's usually a sign of incompetence to lose to Wraths, you just stop flooding the board, but you can't not flood the board with Voja or you're got a 5/5 that draws you a card for attacking, a thing that competes with Kraum but isn't 'busted'). FFS Farewell is not a problem??? It's a big clunky effect at 6 mana, and it's technically a symmetrical wipe. I find it awkward to fit into decks due to the high mana and difficulty to abuse (I like one sided or 'wipe with upside' wipes, Farewell is just a REALLY thorough wipe imho). I guess if you were on PWs it makes for great synergy, but you'll lose all your PW synergy pieces if you go big. HA! Yes, WotC has become very bad about giving players 'what they want' instead of 'what they need'. 'People don't like Shroud' so they got rid of Shroud, but Shroud plays a LOT better than hexproof, nobody likes hexproof on an opposing creature. I wish WotC would remember that the people who dump a lot of money usually want a skill testing game, not a game that is readily solved (you know, like Modern has been since MH1, when it just rotates like Standard most of the format's cards are functionally useless now, just like Legacy). Commander was popular SPECIFICALLY BECAUSE you could happily run cards that saw zero play anywhere else, now the only reason you don't play Commander cards in other formats is because they are banned or not legal. Ragavan not only stealing a card BUT ALSO GIVING A MANA is a great example IMHO of how bad design has become because of the 'everything has to be really easy to use, in the sense that everything mythic just has upside after upside piled higher and deeper'. I wistfully remember when Mythic cards were almost never low MV small effects because 'that just wasn't Mythic!', but that ship sailed long ago at this point.

What if the design philosophy was that legendary creatures couldn’t get ward? Ward in the 99 seems a lot less problematic than having it on something that’s easy to cast over and over.

In arena it does ask if you are sure. I also feel like ward helps big mana powerful cards actually stay around long enough to matter to the player that played it. It feels real bad to cast a high cost commander only to have it answered by a one mana spell before any benefit is had. All the commanders you mentioned have not been an issue in my 12 player play group at all. It makes my group think about the interaction they are playing and better threat recognition.

On Farewell exiling, since one of the modes is exile all graveyards and is the last part of the resolution of the spell all of the cards getting destroyed would get exiled anyway if you choose the Exile all graveyards mode. Forcing all the destroyed cards into the graveyard first then exiling them is strange behavior for a card and would likely often get misplayed in casual play, if it even gets played correctly and not spawning arguments over whether the destroyed cards get exiled at all. Cleanly exiling everything is just removes all of that complication with the side effect of making it slightly stronger in most cases while removing the unintuitive interactions with cards like Syr Konrad seeing the creatures go to the graveyard AND leave the graveyards during the resolution of the same effect. Instead of Syr Konrad seeing his own corpse be exiled from the graveyard, he sees nothing but the creatures that were already in the graveyard leave it.

I thinkThere’s a few removal spells is the same set as voja that can’t be countered lol

They need to print a new Arcane Lighthouse type card, that removes Ward/Hexproof. It wouldn't solve the problem, but the option should exist.